How To Get Debt Free By Budgeting Your Money
by Richard DFO Hijinx

Alright, so you managed to stumble across Get Debt Free Online and are probably scratching your head trying to figure out how in the world to get out from underneath a mountain of debt. This is a situation that many people must face but the answer is much easier than putting that answer into action. It is hard to become debt free, but it CAN be done and I will show you exactly how to get there.

One of the first significant steps in getting debt free is in knowing where you are financially. Knowing where you are financially means you MUST create a financial budget. Creating a financial budget is EXTREMELY important to your long-term success. For you to get debt free you must know what monthly income you have coming in and what monthly expenses you have going out every month. My personal budgets take this one step further; you also must take into account expenses that are certain to happen annually, such as vehicle registrations.

What do you put in a budget? I’ll show you what a typical expense budget might look like for the average American.

Rent/Mortgage - $1005

Auto Insurance - $115

Auto Loan - $405

Auto Loan #2 - $300

Life Insurance - $66

Water - $41

Electricity - $79

Garbage - $19

Natural Gas - $121

Childcare - $500+

Gasoline - $295

Groceries - $995

Telephone - $40

Cable - $51

Internet - $50

Cell Phone - $101

Credit Card - $99

Student Loans - $99+

Total - $4385++

When we start looking at the financial budget outlined above, each item taken individually doesn’t seem like too bad an idea. But taken together things start to spiral out of hand. In the above example budget we see nearly $4400 of monthly expenses, AFTER taxes. For us to be able to BREAK EVEN on this caliber of financial budget we HAVE TO be earning approximately $70,000 per year. This budget doesn’t even include things such as children’s doctor’s visits, and all the other annual crap we haven’t even addressed yet, like enrollment fees, the vehicle expenditures such as registrations and the one off mechanical failures that can cost a ton of money. It’s no wonder people are up to their necks in debt. Most people don’t make $70K and most people have all kinds of off the wall expenditures that aren’t accounted for on the above budget. In order to know where you can cut back, you have to know where you stand.

My assignment to you folks out there reading this is to do this very first step. Make a budget and BE HONEST - it will do you no good if it is not accurate. After we get this done we will be talking about such things as debt equity and discretionary spending. Let us get our financial budgets prepared so we can begin working on a plan to BECOME DEBT FREE!!!